Static Flaying Frame©
Please find hereunder a description of the SFF ©, where you can install it, who can build it for you, what it costs and more.......... In order to have the maximum benefit from this text it is suggested that you also run the interactive presentation.
It is common knowledge that only a small amount of hides and skins available in the world are of what is generally perceived as good quality. Unfortunately the large majority of hides is of low quality and fetches therefore low prices at the international market. Much has been written about the problems that cause a low quality hide, but little has been done.
One of the main factors that determine the low quality of a hide is the way it is being flayed. It is also a defect that is easiest dealt with upstream. A natural defect, if not serious, like an insect bite, or a small scar can be covered by the mechanical and chemical treatment of a hide, whereas a hole is a hole and remains a hole, independently of what you do with the hide. Similarly a deep cut also influences significantly the overall quality perception and therefore the value of a hide. Due to the fact that most hides are flayed by hand, the presence of holes and cuts is logical and are difficult to eliminate or avoid, because even the most careful butcher, if there is any such person, cannot avoid that his knife slips while flaying, provoking a deep cut, or worse a hole.
| With the use of the Static Flaying Frame© you will be able to produce hides which have the same quality as hides that are pulled by expensive pneumatic or hydraulic machines, hence no holes and no cuts. | |
Let me first take you step by step through the sequence of how this SFF© actually works.
| The animal enters the abattoir is stunned and bled. Next it is hung from its Achilles tendon and the lower legs are removed. At the following station the belly is opened, and also the shanks are opened. At this station we actually arrive at the point where we are going to use the SFF. The carcass should be positioned with its back more or less perpendicular, directly in front and in the middle of the left of the three parallel pipes. |  |
| In order to pull the hide we need a chain. The chain is at one end attached to the hook of the pulley, which can be mechanic or electrical, and the other end of the chain must end in a y-shape with two larger rings at the extreme end of each of the legs of the Y. By passing the chain through the last ring you form a loop and the hide of the lower legs must be passed inside the loop. If you pull the chain at this point, the hide of the lower legs is firmly clamped by the chain and it will not move or tear despite the huge forced that is going to be exercised. The more the chain is pulled, the firmer is the hold on the hide. The chain must pass under both outside pipes and over the middle pipe. This is important as this allows the forces that are necessary to pull the hide to be correctly and evenly distributed, and this avoids damage to the hide. |   |
The next step is to pull the chain of the pulley (or push the button of an electrical pulley) and the hide will come off. The butt section is usually very strongly attached to the flesh and the butcher should help the hide to detach from the flesh with very light strokes of his flaying knife.
I have timed the operation and the actual pulling of the hide takes less than one minute. By electrical pulley 10-15 seconds!
Until now we have seen how the SFF© works, and now I’d like to show you what you actually need in order to make use of the SFF©.
In an ideal situation you would need a small abattoir, but even a large room would be sufficient. The height of the room should be minimum 5 meters or 15 feet, and you need a beam from which the carcass can be hung. The minimum requirement though is a strong cement floor in which you should be able to bolt the SFF©. With just a cement floor and a small iron construction from which you can hang the carcass, you still can produce a perfectly machine flayed hide. In fact when trials sponsored by Unido were made in Mysore India, it was discovered that the roof of the abattoir was not strong enough to hang the carcass, and a small construction to hang the carcass from was necessary. In short the actual building requirements to place and use the SFF© are minimal, and that is why the SFF© is ideal anywhere from city slaughterhouses to small community slabs. The end result is and remains a fully machine flayed hide!
The SFF© is also cheap to build. If you decide to have it constructed in stainless steel, it will cost about 350 dollars, plus the pulley and the chain, which respectively will account for another $ 25.= and $ 45.=, hence a total of 440 dollars. If you would decide to have the SFF© constructed in common iron pipe, you will probably spend less than 200 dollars for the SFF©, hence about 270 dollars for the whole set-up. There is virtually no maintenance as there are no moving parts. If you use a mechanical pulley, you have no energy consumption either, which means that the SFF ©can be used anywhere from town to township, to the smallest of villages, because you need no power supply.
Let us make some calculations. I have said that a stainless steel SFF© costs together with chain and pulley about 440 dollars. I have timed, that from the moment you attach the chains to the shanks it takes less than one minute to pull a hide. I estimate therefore that if the flow in an abattoir is well organised, you can pull up to 30 hides per hour. Let us assume that an average community kills about 60 head per day, this means we would look at a production of about 1200 hides per month, which represent a container load of about 20'000 kilo’s in wet salted condition. If we suppose that a trader would just pay 5 cents per kilo more for a machine flayed hide than for a hand flayed hide, that particular community fetches 1000 dollars per month more for its hides when they are flayed with the SFF©, which I believe in certain areas is considered a large amount of money. Therefore the cost of an SFF© will be recovered in less than one month. I think there is virtually no project operating anywhere that has such a high profitability.
The SFF© is accessible to everybody, from industry to artisan. It can be built locally by any artisan who is capable of welding a couple of pipes together in less than one day. You don’t need a western industry to provide for the SFF©. You don’t need spare parts. It costs virtually nothing to run. The drawing is available to everybody, totally free of charge. We want to distribute the SFF© to any community that produces hides, in all developing and developed countries. As far as the developed countries are concerned, they have to look after themselves, whereas for the developing world, and in particular in Africa I have found both COTANCE and UNIDO prepared to sponsor what we hope will become a fully fledged program. In the Interactive presentation you'll find a questionnaire which I ask you to fill out. The purpose of this questionnaire is to determine in what way and how Sam Setter, COTANCE and UNIDO can finance and organise a fully fledged campaign to help as many communities to get into possession of an SFF©. The more response we get, the better are the chances that a campaign can be organised and the better is the chance that also your community will be included. You can also advise your association, ministry or government organisation about the existence of the SFF© and ask them to contact COTANCE.
It is our intention to promote the use of the SFF© world wide in as many places as possible. Therefore we need people who are prepared to promote and bring the idea of the SFF© to the attention of governments, associations, anybody who is prepared to listen and co-operate. If you want to become a promoter, or if you know an organisation that could become a promoter, please let me know and I’ll contact you and/or the possible promoter. We offer promoters the possibility to have there logo on the Questionnaire and on the interactive presentation.
If you have questions or if you wish to contact me to become or present a promoter, please e-mail me directly at Sam Setter or fax COTANCE Brussels, Unido Vienna, ITC Geneva or Leather International in the UK.